Markets Insider
- Facebook is seesawing Wednesday ahead of earnings.
- Wall Street expects solid earnings-per-share and revenue growth.
- Facebook slid Tuesday after it published a list of guidelines on what is and isn’t allowed on the platform.
- Government regulation is a key risk investors are focused on ahead of earnings.
- Watch Facebook trade in real time here.
Facebook shares are seesawing ahead of the company’s first-quarter results, which are due out after Wednesday’s closing bell. Shares fell as much as 2.2% in early action, but have recouped the lion’s share of those losses. They’re now lower by just 0.33%.
Shares slid more than 3% Tuesday after Facebook published a list of guidelines on what is and isn’t allowed on the platform. The list focused on issues such as objectionable content, violent and criminal behavior, and intellectual property.
The announcement from Facebook was the latest attempt by the social-media giant to distance itself from the Cambridge Analytica data scandal that surfaced in March. Cambridge Analytica, a political-research firm, gained access to roughly 87 million Facebook users’ data.
News of the scandal caused Facebook shares to plunge as much as 19.5% in two weeks following, wiping out nearly $100 billion of market cap.
Even before the scandal, Facebook was dealing with a fake news problem. That caused the company to rejigger its algorithm in order to prioritize friend-related and personal content over news.
Now, investors are concerned with several key risks, with the major one centering on pending EU regulation and potential US regulation on data privacy.
Wall Street expects the social media giant to report adjusted earnings of $1.59 a share on revenue of $11.41 billion. That would be an EPS growth rate of 32.8% year-over-year, and a revenue growth rate of 42.1% year-over-year.
Facebook is down 12.31% on the year.
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